


The All-American Girl

by TheColorBlue



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Ethics of Project Rebirth, Gen, Multiplicity/Plurality, the domestic life of being an Avenger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-17
Updated: 2013-02-21
Packaged: 2017-11-03 19:35:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/385085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain America was never meant to be a woman, and Toni Stark needs to watch what comes out of her mouth, as per usual. Note: This is less a chaptered story than a series of somewhat related episodes strung together. I also tend to skip around a bit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Toni is inspired by this [art](http://kreugan.tumblr.com/post/8423005240/experimenting-arrrrgh-but-now-its-time-for-bed), as is Steph, except I imagine Steph's build to be a bit...bulkier? Maybe like Korra from _Legend of Korra_.

Antonia Stark was an old hand at looking like a lady. There were certain things her mother had drilled into her as a child, with private tutors and private boarding schools and all the rest of that. Toni Stark understood the fundamentals of make-up and hair and fashion and wardrobe; she had been schooled in etiquette and social dance and deportment. What she didn’t understand, she hired people to understand and take care of for her. Pepper for instance. Good ole’ Pepper who could be counted on for anything. 

Antonia Stark understood the fundamentals, and like very basic coding, she had it all stored at the very bottom of her box of thoughts, to be executed automatically. She knew how to dress for meetings with the company board. She knew how to smile for the cameras, how to talk, and even her decision to sit cross-legged in front of the podium as she ate her cheeseburger and talked to the press with her mouth half-full had a degree of calculation built-in automatic. She didn’t have to think about it. She knew how she was coming off and she knew the impression was perfect. Maybe not perfect for the Stark company, or perfect for Pepper, or Fury, or whoever hell else might have stock in the circumstances, but she was perfect for herself. She was 100% self-manufactured Toni Stark and don’t you forget it. 

Today she was taking Stephanie Rogers out for burgers. There might have been an apology somewhere in there, as subtext. They had got off on the wrong foot, sure, something said about being a stuck-up debutante in an iron suit, and maybe a bit of sneering about science experiments gone wrong on the side. 

Steph had, of course, sought to apologize first. How typical. Of course, Toni could also privately acknowledge that her comments had been way out of hand, the sort of private that did not leave her head and exit in so many words, and then she had decided to pay for greasy burgers as some kind of half-assed attempt at a peace offering. It was a start, anyway. 

Toni was very particular about where they’d eat out. It was this great little place downtown, old-fashioned style kind of diner, with all the vintage art posters and memorabilia from the thirties and forties. The food was, of course, all-American, sturdy fare, fancy burgers and fries and milkshakes in all flavors. She figured Miss America here would appreciate this kind of homey wholesome food or whatever after living on the cafeteria crap they served at SHIELD HQ. Maybe later she could ease Steph into some real up-scale places too, really open her horizons, show her the vast and unexplored world of international cuisine, etc. etc. etc. After they were seated, Toni kicked back in their booth and pulled out her phone, busy checking the data files that JARVIS was running through for her back in the lab. Steph peered almost cautiously through the menu. 

“Back home,” Steph began from behind her menu, her shoulders hunched a little, “milkshakes usually only came in chocolate or vanilla. They didn’t put pineapple in burgers either. This is all so—“

Toni flapped her hand at Steph without looking up from her phone. “I’m easing you into the new millennium, Rogers. Be glad I didn’t drag you to my favorite sushi bar, that would have given you a real heart attack, I’m sure. Actually, go ahead and order the Hawaiian burger. It’s… how would you say in your quaint old-time talk? ‘Real swell.’” She said the last with a kind of wicked enjoyment. ‘Real swell.’ Adorable, really. 

“I had a friend back in art school who wanted to go to Hawaii,” Steph said. “I’ve heard it’s really beautiful.”

The waitress came to take their orders. Toni got the classic burger, while Steph ordered the Hawaiian and a chocolate milkshake. When the milkshake arrived, Steph clasped one hand around the neck of the glass and drank milkshake from the straw, and there was an oddly, huh, small and shy feeling to the look her, never mind her well-built physique, how tall she was, the breadth of her shoulders against the seat of the booth. 

Toni studied her mate on the sly while pretending to be absorbed with her phone, chatting it up with JARVIS, or Angry Birds, or whatever, she could always make it up later if asked. 

What Toni knew about Captain America: Cap hadn’t supposed to be a girl. There had been two on-going trials with the Super Soldier Serum, one involving an enlisted soldier, and a side trial involving the effect of the serum on the fairer gender. The background motivation was a bit muddy, and you could say all you liked about the Nazis' Aryan ideals, but the Americans had been trying to make the physiologically perfect man themselves, and they would have succeeded except Steph’s male counterpart died, and she hadn’t. Actually, the serum had probably saved her life, if her medical history had been anything to go by. 

Toni didn’t know how much thought Miss Cap had put into the ethics of that whole operation. Maybe more than Toni had given her credit for. In their argument, Steph had gone, as they say, white as a sheet at Toni’s below-the-belt snipes about Steph being little more than someone’s little lab experiment. It had probably taken a fuck-ton of sheer self-control for Steph to have stopped herself from punching Toni right in the kisser. 

What Toni knew about Captain America was that, in the interests of further studying the effects of the serum, Steph had been allowed to join the military and fight in the war. She had done it all disguised as a man, as approved by her superiors. Probably, they had imagined that having a female Captain America would have done terrible things to soldier morale. Then she’d outed herself to the press, accidentally, saved the world from the Red Skull, and then gotten herself encased in a hunk of ice. 

Hearing a story of epic proportions like that, Toni thought, maybe a little pettily, anyone would be having serious issues of insecurity. God _damn_ it. Stephanie Rogers had been her _hero_ growing up, and yes, even as a nerdy little engineering student at MIT she’d had a poster of Captain America on her ceiling, the works, etc. etc. etc.

Speaking of which, Steph was never to know about Toni’s secret collection of fan memorabilia back home. Or the Captain America bedsheets and pajamas that Toni still wore more often than not. 

_Never_.

Steph had finished three-quarters of her milkshake, and their food hadn’t even arrived yet.

Toni squinted at the picture in front of her.

“For crying out loud,” she said. 

Steph looked unhappy, like she was wondering if Toni was going to try starting another fight. Toni would never. Well, maybe.

“What—“ Steph began.

“You are an unfair human being,” Toni complained. “I bet we could order you another milkshake and you’d have that and the burger, and maybe fries and onion rings and why not some fried chicken, and you wouldn’t gain an ounce.”

“Well—“

“Shut up, you,” Toni said, and hoped it didn’t come off as unkind, because it wasn’t supposed to be. “I’ll just be over here, struggling to fit into my pants after a salad, thank you very much, except fuckin’ forget the salad, I’m having me a burger whether the Vanity Fair photographers like it or not.”

Steph was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “For what it’s worth, I think you’re very lovely, just like that.”

Toni looked up from scrolling through useless emails to gawk at Captain America. Steph had a very open and sincere look. “Maybe you don’t look like what people back home would have said is conventionally pretty, but I like it,” Steph admitted. “Katharine Hepburn always wore slacks like you do, and looked just as good and confident, and I always thought that was tops.”

Toni closed her inbox in a very deliberate way, and then shoved her phone into her pocket. “Steph, with flattery like that, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. I like you already.” Then she leaned over and shouted at the nearest waiter, who was trying to take another table’s order, “Hey, _garçon _, where’s our orders? I’m dying of hunger here! Dying!” while Steph looked like she was torn between laughing and wanting to sink into her seat cushions from sheer embarrassment.__


	2. Chapter 2

This was the way the song went, the one in the Disney cartoon and now playing on the radios. Donald Duck blew raspberries at “der Fuehrer,” and Steph hummed the tune in an absent-minded way as she dressed for her first round of selling war bonds and punching Hitler in the jaw.

_Are we not the supermen? Aryan-pure supermen?  
Ja we are the supermen (super duper supermen)-- _

_When der Fuehrer says, we is de master race  
We heil, heil, right in der Fuehrer's face;  
Not to love der Fuehrer is a great disgrace,  
So we heil, heil, right in der Fuehrer's face--_

“Captain America,” someone said through the door, “You’re out in five.”

Steph stopped humming long enough to adjust her cowl in the mirror. She tried a smile. 

This was supposed to be the easy part, she thought. The real challenge would come with the war, with going overseas, and she thought, she needed to smile, to show those people the kind of soldier they’d be supporting when they bought those war bonds. 

One for America.

\--

She went through the motions of pitching the call for buying war bonds, paying taxes, the whole speech. The chorus girls sang and danced in perfect rows behind her. She had thought that it went well. She felt silly, but with all the smiling faces that she could half-make out, the cheers of the kids, she had thought that it went well. There was a brief meeting with the press afterwards. Flashpots were shooting bright in the darkness of the theater, all noise and show, and that on top of the chatter of the reporters, Stephanie Rogers almost did not hear the first accusation. She most certainly heard the second. And the third. And the fourth. 

“Captain America, what are your thoughts on the ethics behind the Super Soldier project?”

“Do you believe that there is hypocrisy in creating a blue-eyed blond super solder when that’s exactly what the Nazis would be right behind?”

“Captain America—“

“—I thought we were supporting our boys abroad, not some screwy government science experiment—“

“Captain America!—“

Steph had nearly reeled back in shock at the questions. She hadn’t had time, lately, to read newspapers, to keep up with the newsreels. This was the first she’d ever heard anything like this. And now she was being taken backstage, and there was someone shouting that “Captain America will no longer be taking any questions—“

Steph was quickly ushered back to her dressing room, and in the blessed quiet she pulled off her cowl and stripped off the monkey suit, and then she was just Stephanie Rogers, her chest bound under the costume and her hair cut like a boy’s. She couldn’t leave the theater as a girl either. There was a men’s suit waiting for her, all the trappings of her on-going disguise. Steph put her hand to her face and tried to steady her breathing, her strangely pounding heart. 

She had gone into the program as a woman and come out on the other side as a cross-dresser in a goddamned theater costume. And now there were people out there comparing her to the goddamn Nazis, and the implication of that was a like a punch to the gut. 

“Fuck,” she said to nobody, and put her hand down, and then she reached for the pressed shirt that had been hung up for her to wear. 

\--

In the new millennium, Toni was sprawled out on the couch in the break room, watching something called Project Runway while Clare Barton hassled her to change the channel. 

“Leave me alone,” Toni whined from the couch. “Everyone has their trashy television programming weaknesses.”

Steph sat on in her own chair and nursed a coffee and tried not to feel completely out of place. 

She was letting her hair grow out. Pretty soon it’d be long enough that she could have it trimmed into a bob. Or, well, Toni had been suggesting a more modern haircut, but Steph didn’t like the idea. She tried to imagine the image, and it didn’t feel like her. 

\--

“The military tried to make a new kind of super soldier out of me, too,” Bridget Banner said. 

Steph perched precariously on a too-small stool. Bridget was looking at tissue samples under some kind of high-tech microscope and recording notes into her tablet. The tissue samples had come from Gigi—also nicknamed, on occasion, the “jolly green giantess.” That had been Toni’s input. 

Steph remembered when Bridget had been initially recruited for the Avengers. Bridget had said, in a very direct way, “She’s not ‘the Hulk.’ She’s Gigi. That’s what she wanted me to tell all of you, and she’d appreciate not being called a monster.”

Apparently, Bridget had long made her peace with the green-skinned, heavily muscled giantess of a person who shared genetic space with her. Gigi had the physique of an over-sized body builder. She didn’t talk much. She was gentle with plants. Actually, it was hard to tell sometimes what went on in Gigi’s head, except from what Bridget relayed, and Bridget talked like a scientist. 

Steph sometimes wondered about nuances lost in translation, and the time she and Gigi had shared pizza while rearranging the plants in the garden space that Bridget was developing on SHIELD’s premises. The garden was for Gigi’s peace of mind. Clare liked to go out there to take naps. 

Bridget said, “You know, back in the seventies, when Sybil was getting to be a big deal, and before Legion, Dr. Darlene Haller, became the public face for multiplicity advocacy and debunked all the usual stereotypes—they used to think that only females got ‘multiple personality disorder,’ as it was called.” Bridget wrinkled her nose. “Probably from the usual ideas about females and hysterics, the weak female mind, all of that. I have to tell you, you were a childhood idol of mine; I know Toni worships the ground you walk on—“

“I don’t know about that,” Steph said weakly. 

“…but really: Lady Captain America saves the world. A woman shows that kind of courage and strength of body and mind. Speaking of which.” Bridget syringed liquid from a tiny vial onto her sample and peered through the microscope lens. Satisfied with what she saw, she looked up at Steph again and said, “7AM tomorrow, yoga. You’re still up to that, right? The exercises will help you stay flexible and limber; I shudder to think what all of that military training did to that part of you.”

“I can still touch my toes?” Steph offered dubiously.

“Very cute,” Bridget said with a slight smile. “I suppose it’s useless to try getting Toni to join us.”

“Probably,” Steph agreed, and obediently took a case of tiny vials from Bridget when the smaller woman handed them to her. “These go on shelf C2 of that cabinet over there. You might as well make yourself useful while you’re here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song: [Der Fuehrer's Face](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MReV9dkAVhY).


	3. Chapter 3

Gigi’s favorite musical is _Wicked_ , which sounds like the obvious answer, except she’d punch anyone in the face who snickered at the idea . _In the face_. 

There are certain people for whom spoken words are not a natural language. Gigi is one of those people. Her thoughts come best in the form of image and abstract sound and color. Some people don’t understand that her stilted words are not evidence of a stunted brain. They take her muscled body and large appearance at some kind of face value, and see only the potential for war and combat. She lashes out at those sorts of people, and takes enormous pleasure in it, taking enormous pleasure in the feeling of her fist smashing through tanks and rocks. That is not, however, all that she is. It is also why the name she chose was that of a woman, even when the whole of the military had looked at her and seen a monster. 

There is a girl on the stage whose skin is green like Gigi’s, and who can leap high into the sky like Gigi, leaving the earth far behind. The girl named Elphaba can talk in so many words in the way that Gigi cannot, and would not care to do even if she could, but that’s all right. Elphaba is a lot more like Bridget Banner. She is smart like Bridget, and she is like when the soldiers come after Bridget: small and weakly muscled, but also determined, and smart. 

Bridget says that women like them can do a lot for the world: women who are smart and women who are different, even if it is different in the subtle way. There is Stephanie who went with Bridget and Toni to shop for modern clothes, and was sad because her body was all wrong for these skinny, tiny dresses and jeans. Steph is tall and muscled and strong, and Gigi has heard Steph tell Bridget that she looks all wrong for a girl. This is garbage. Gigi will smash in anyone’s face who suggests that Steph isn’t beautiful, because Steph is her friend, and they’ve eaten pizza together and moved enormous potted plants that Toni took one look at and said, “No thanks; not interested in breaking my back.”

Gigi is not beautiful. She was sure that was a fact, except that there’s a girl on the stage who is green like her, and there’s a Captain America who is muscled and tall, and also the good-natured goddess Tova, who comes by periodically to SHIELD HQ. Tova likes beer and coffee and smashing cups and hunting, and she is strong like Captain America, or maybe stronger, which is all right because she is a goddess. 

Tova clapped Gigi on the hand once after a fight against an Asgardian creature in the city, probably because Gigi’s shoulder was too high up, and said that her “green friend was a worthy ally in battle,” and Gigi supposes that’s all right. 

Then Tova had spun her hammer in a lazy way then, and said, “It is a triumphant day indeed. We must celebrate at the Iron Maiden’s estate in proper fashion this night” which had mostly meant loads of take-out that Gigi had enjoyed vicariously through Bridget sitting in the body, and also everyone who could get drunk getting drunk, and Steph extracting herself from the mess early enough in the evening so that she could exit with her dignity intact.


	4. Chapter 4

Nicolai Romanov, the only male member of the Avengers Initiative, was sitting in one of the facility lounges. It was fifteen minutes before their next meeting. He was reading a newspaper, except he wasn’t sure if it was worth the trouble of reading because it was same old, same old: crooked politicians and presidential campaigning debacles and the usual buffoonery. He wrinkled his nose, turned the page, and while there was a lot to be desired about the political climate back in Russia, he wasn’t sure he would have been so proud to be an American either. 

Oh, and well here was Gigi, touching a hand at the glass of the sliding doors leading outside (the sunlight was Bridget’s idea—she’d thought that introducing an element of the outdoors would be good for morale, in the subconscious way). The sliding doors had been locked. Gigi must have jumped into the courtyard from somewhere else. Nicolai stood up, went over, and opened the door for Gigi, and then went back to the couch and sat down again. He picked up some useless magazine about home and gardening. Gigi continued to sit outside, content to peer in. For some reason, Nicolai was reminded of cats. 

Gigi said, “Black Widow is a girl spider.”

Nicolai turned the page of his magazine. The pages were glossy and new and make a pleasant noise when turned. Here was an article on making homemade lemon bars. 

“That it is,” Nicolai said. “But it can also be male spiders too. You can’t have girls without boys.” 

Gigi was still looking at him, like she expected an answer. She took up most of the view of the tiny courtyard lawn, Nicolai noticed. 

Nicolai did not feel answering her unspoken questions. He read his magazine instead. Gigi seemed to get bored and was looking at the dandelions creeping up in the lawn instead. 

Unlike the other members of his team, Nicolai was androgynous enough that he could pass for either a girl or a boy, and he often did, for the purpose of fulfilling SHIELD assignments, and sometimes not for any real purpose at all. There probably wasn’t a good reason for his choosing the name Black Widow. He had liked the sound of it, but it wasn’t a good reason, perhaps. 

He didn’t need to explain himself, really, and perhaps that was the best reason. Clare had long since learned not to make jokes about the matter. 

Steph, Toni, and Clare were coming in from the hall now, Toni making some loud and lewd jokes while Clare guffawed. Nicolai read his magazine and wondered about recipes for pickled watermelon rind.


	5. Chapter 5

Before WWII, Steph had been trained as a secretary. Touch-typing, speed-reading, and short-hand note-taking had been second-hand to her. She had spent her days working in a government office while occupying her evenings as often the only female present in fine arts classes—excluding, of course, the female figure drawing models. When the war came round, she had gotten work in a quiet, military-recruitment office, and would have stayed in that office filing and stamping forms, giving the occasional fisheye to the dick who couldn’t respectfully keep his eyes or his hands to himself—well, life would have been hunky-dory had it not been for the day Dr. Erskine came in to review charts and assessments, and there had been that enemy agent had tried to steal a sheaf of papers from the office, making a right hullaballoo of the situation too. Steph had stopped him with a quick mind and a well-aimed pencil mug. The mug had hit the agent square in the back of his skull, knocking him to the floor until security had caught up. 

Dr. Erskine had stopped to thank this skinny, frail-looking woman with a determined tilt to her chin. They had gotten to talking about the war after that…and, well. The rest had just gone from there. Dr. Erskine was looking for both young men and women for a government military project that was on-going. Steph had been recruited for the project within the next few days. 

In the new millennium, computers were a wonder for Steph. She loved the internet, and she loved document notation programs like Microsoft Word. She loved being able to type things into a lit-up screen and not have to worry about making mistakes and wasting valuable paper. She loved having music and videos readily available on her little tablet. She even loved Microsoft Excel, which may have seemed like an odd thing to love, but it was such a wonder to her, this program that could make numerical calculations and the creation of charts and tables to be such an easy thing. 

There were many things that were so novel and dazzling to Steph, once she had begun to acclimate to the modern times. And at least once a month, Steph went and holed herself up in the downtown public library. There were so many novel and dazzling things, and Steph sometimes wanted to hide in old and comforting and enclosing places before everything came crashing down on her again. 

Toni found her, one fine Sunday afternoon, sitting on the floor inbetween tall shelves of books, and Steph had a small pile of books next to her, and she was reading Charles Dickens. She was reading _David Copperfield_ , and she had purposefully chosen one of the older editions, with cloth-covered binding, and yellowed pages that smelled like libraries should, and with an old and more familiar look to the font on the page. 

Toni was wearing sunglasses, in a library, and she looked slim and beautiful, standing above Steph in her expensive slacks and blouse. She pulled off her sunglasses, looked down at Steph, and said, “I just don’t understand it. You didn’t need to come all the way out here to read books. I bought you that Kindle, didn’t I? You could read anything you wanted, without having to hunt it down as a printed copy.” She looked round the library in a sort of cursory way, and then said. “Guess it’s a pretty nice library. Kind of odd smelling, but all libraries seem to smell kind of old and strange like that. All of this paper lying around.”

Steph shrugged, turning to the next page of her book. Well, she knew that she wasn’t going to get anything else read now, but she didn’t want to become overly indulgent of Toni’s irreverent little ways. Toni tended to crave attention so much, and Steph wasn’t sure letting Toni get into the regular habit of that craving was good for her. 

“Maybe you should read more too,” Steph suggested. “Can’t be good to only focus on robotics all the time—have to have a balanced mind.”

Toni made a noncommittal noise in response to that. 

When Steph was growing up, she had read all the time. The library was her second home. When she was sick and bed-ridden, which was frequent, she had escaped illness by having all the books piled around her, devouring them. Toni was plying through the stack that Steph had collected, and found _Crime and Punishment_ , _The Little Princess_ , _A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_ , and a new comic book that Steph had found, _Maus_ , which had struck Steph as completely unlike anything she’d ever read before, especially from a comic book.

Toni made a low noise like a whistle, and then neatly restacked Steph’s little pile. She sat down next to Steph and then wiggled over a little to lean up against Steph’s arm. She made a little happy-content noise when Steph put her hand round Toni’s shoulders and gave a gentle squeeze, her other hand still hanging onto _David Copperfield_. 

“Although I guess it’s kind of funny, saying something like that. Back home,” Steph said, which was her way of saying _back then_ , “a girl could have counted herself independent and really up there if she was working as a nurse, or a teacher. Sometimes you heard about real heroes like Amelia Earhart, but that just seemed like a dream for someone very special. And now I’m sitting next to one of the world’s greatest engineers, and a real tough lady in a fight to boot.”

“Flattery will get you anything you want, Steph,” Toni said, snuggling up next to Steph with a pleased look on her face. “Also, I’m here to take you out to lunch. I’ve got to get back to my workshop this afternoon, too much stuff going on, you know the usual—but I wanted to spend some time with my favorite person, apart from me of course.”

Steph rolled her eyes. Toni smirked, and then leaned over to kiss Steph. Steph sat still, and gently kissed Toni back, but she was still shy about public displays of affection. It just didn’t seem appropriate, and less so particularly with two women, even if same-sex marriage was legal in that state nowadays. Reflexively, she sort of looked up and around afterwards, to see if anyone had been watching, but of course no one had, and she let Toni help her with her books as they both stood up. Toni clung to her arm as they walked out, and Steph let her.


	6. Chapter 6

The first time she met Captain America, Toni thought: she looked just like in the posters. She was tall, broad-shouldered, and with her hair cut so short like that—slicked back, she could have easily passed for a beautiful young man of the forties. And obviously Steph had. 

There had been a time when Toni could have easily introduced herself to the world as the Iron Man, rather than the Iron Woman. Her armor was gender-neutral, the chest of it plated for protection, not as a metal bra with structural weakness inherent in the make of it, what kind of tacky moron did you take her for. She could have calibrated her voice box to emit the dulcet tones of a man. They had already been assuming that anyway, the media talking about the mysterious Iron Man. Fuck them. 

She was the Iron Woman, and she carefully cultivated the public image of a beautifully brilliant philistine. 

In her years growing up, and more to please her mother than anyone else, she had allowed herself to play the part of the sexy, lovely teenage heiress with too much money and cutting a swathe through the beaus. She had played the part her parents had wanted her to show at their dinner parties and social events. Toni hadn’t wanted to disappoint either of them, nevermind that her father didn’t seem to take notice of the efforts anyway, the old bastard. Now her parents were gone, and she had no family to answer to. 

Fuck the media. She did what she wanted, and she was sitting in a company meeting, listening carefully of course, but deliberately projecting the image of an idiot, dressed in a perfectly tailored suit while sitting back and playing Angry Birds on her phone and eating half a grilled cheese sandwich and taking care to be noisy about it. 

Steph was right, Toni was an attention monger. Oh well, she was a disgustingly rich and disgustingly brilliant attention monger, she could afford to be known as the dumbass who sat around in thousand dollar dress suits and chewed with her mouth open and, by the way, saved the world on a regular basis with her 100% self-designed powered suit of armor while also working as head engineer at Stark Industries. 

The person whose opinion she cared most about these days, anyway, was Steph’s, and she nearly always behaved around Steph. Nearly. Good ole Steph. She texted Steph: _hey baby, I love you_ and five minutes later she received _don’t text me while you’re in meetings_. Toni was beginning to sulk, until a minute later, there was the follow-up _love you too_ and then Toni beamed.


	7. Chapter 7

Gigi has heard that if you play music for plants, or sing to them, or talk to them a lot, they will grow better. At the Avengers Tower, Bridget had helped her buy pots and soil and seeds for planting basil and mint and cucumber and tomatoes and edible violets. They have been arranged around the windows as in to take in the best light. Gigi is very careful to water them every day. Also, she plays classical music for them while she waters them, and looks at them, and while she goes to make lunch: usually a stack of some kind of sandwich, or Bridget orders food out for them. This is usually in the afternoons, when Bridget is taking a break from working in the lab, and she lets Gigi take an hour to look after her plants and to get something to eat. 

Toni is working. 

Steph is probably over at SHEILD HQ, either keeping up with her personal training, or working with batches of the new SHIELD agents-in-training. 

Nicolai is oversees, doing more SHIELD stuff.

Who even knows what Tova gets up to during the day.

And Clare is off-duty, apparently, because she’s on the balcony outside their window, her face pressed against the glass, comically. 

Gigi tries to frown threateningly, because now the window is dirty. All this does is induce Clare to smoosh her mouth more against the glass. Clare never wears lipstick. This is good, because Gigi is sure that glass would be looking even dirtier now otherwise. 

“The Emperor Waltz” is playing in the apartment when Clare lets herself in through the double doors. 

“Wow,” she says, wandering in. “Fancy.” Her mouth quirks up at one corner when she looks at Gigi. The expression is full of mischief. “You are quite the fancypants, aren’t you? And I thought that it would have been Bridget who was all into the opera and ballet and whathaveyou.” 

Gigi makes Clare a sandwich too, because that’s what she does. 

Then, because somehow, a sandwich doesn’t seem quite adequate, Gigi goes over to the fridge and looks inside. There is almond milk (Bridget is lactose intolerant) and a box with a day-old red bean filled pastry inside, along with assorted other spare groceries like eggs, onions, a package of ground beef. Gigi hesitates, then takes out the milk, and also the pastry, and offers it to Clare, alongside the sandwich. 

Clare was sitting at the counter, swiveling round and around on her stool, but when she sees what Gigi is offering, she has a funny look her face. “Oh, geez. I didn’t come here to make you feed me. Gosh, now you’re making me feeling guilty.” She does a weird thing then, sliding off her stool in this completely graceful way, like an acrobat, and then she must be sitting under the little ledge of the granite countertop, where Gigi can’t see her. Gigi can smell her, though. She knows that this is something you’re not supposed to tell people out aloud because it sounds “creepy” or whatever, but like that Toni has a very particular perfume she uses, and that’s how Gigi can tell which is her favorite chair in the community rec room. Tova has an interesting scent too, like metal and lightning. Clare has a subtle scent, like soap and the scent of the city carried on the wind. 

Clare pops up briefly to help herself to the sandwich plate Gigi had made for her, only to slip back to her hiding place again. 

Clare is very beautiful to Gigi in a way that is very different from how beautiful Toni, or Steph, or Tova, or even Nicolai is. Clare has very short hair and a face that is sharp like a bird’s. Clare is beautiful in a way that makes Gigi a little sad, and she would never be able to articulate why that is, she is sure. 

Gigi takes her sandwich and two glasses of milk, and she goes round the counter to where Clare is so that she can sit on the floor too. Clare sits up and kisses Gigi on the nose, and then she is back on the floor again, the motion sort of darting and soft. 

Gigi is quiet at that. She doesn't usually have much to say, or know what to say, fumbling with it, but even less so right now. 

Then she eats her first sandwich in one bite. 

She has a stack of ten sandwiches on her plate which is really a tray. They haven’t found yet giant-sized sandwich bread to make sandwiches with. They are turkey and Swiss, and delicious. 

“The Emperor Waltz” is still playing for the plants. 

And Clare is humming along with the music, and then she steals another sandwich from Gigi’s plate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trivia: I was thinking of artist [Gingerhaze](http://gingerhaze.tumblr.com) the entire time I wrote Clare's characterization. 
> 
> Also, I'm not sure if this segment was any good, especially given how long since writing the last one, but here it is anyhow.


	8. Chapter 8

Bridget was a very composed and put-together lady. She didn’t really stock it up to her childhood, which was terrible, but somewhere along the lines she picked up role models and she stuck to them. Captain America. Dr. Darlene Haller. So maybe there was a time or two she ended up in the middle of no-where, dirt in places she’d never thought she’d have dirt, and half-naked, and weak from hunger and dehydration, and not quite sure what was going on… and (back then) for some reason there’d be this odd sensation in the back of her head like some kind of protective elephant thing whatever (Gigi, but she hadn’t know it)… Well, all right, so there would be a lot of things going on, but at least she wasn’t an instrument in the hands of the military anymore (for now, thank god) and she’d sort of narrow her eyes and fix her gaze on the horizon. She wouldn’t think about how her life had fallen apart, she’d think about Captain America fallen somewhere out in the ocean (geographical coordinates classified). She’d think about the occasional mishaps of the so-called X-Men (identities classified, but everyone knew about Professor Charlotte Xavier and Erika Lensherr). There were a lot of crazy things out there, and somehow Bridget knew that she wasn’t going to die of exposure (she could feel it in her bones) and she’d keep walking until she found a diner where she could ask for a glass of water, or a clothesline where she could steal a real shirt.

She kept thinking of burgers.

Her kingdom for a cheeseburger, you wouldn’t even believe it but she meant it 100%.

\---

Incidentally, Bridget was the kind of lactose intolerant person who would occasionally sneak a cheeseburger or gelato or cheese covered pasta because she _liked_ cheese and ice cream, even if she did have to go lie down somewhere and roll around in the agony. 

Actually, these days she cheated.

She’d discovered that Gigi digested lactose fine, and nowadays she’d request that Gigi switch with her until the dairy product had been successfully broken down in their GI tract. 

These days, she was getting devious about it, Bridget was. She’d time it so that she could have her dairy-based snack before Gigi was scheduled to have time outside. Then everything worked out absolutely great. 

\---

On Thursday, Jonathon van Dyne had come by the tower to do consultations with the Avengers. There was going to be a charity gala and fashion show; Jonathon’s idea had been to design evening wear for the Avengers, and then the clothing would be auctioned off for charity.

Jon was a slender, nearly petite young man dressed in a simple ensemble of black and yellow and brown. He sketched out designs on a tablet, while Steph sat on the couch with a hard to read look on her face, and Toni draped herself over her girlfriend and said things about Steph was going to look great, just stunning, “you’ll be so gorgeous I could just eat you up,” and to that Steph just scrunched her face up into a rueful look.

“You’ll look great,” Jon said, stylus tracing designs across his tablet. Strong lines, strong colors, but also elegant. I don’t know. I have something in my head that’s like Art Deco, but also modern—I’ll have to think about it, and then I’ll send you the final designs for approval. You liked the kind of shape I showed you right? With the jacket and the dress and the scarf, and the whole outfit will be tailored to you perfectly, believe you me.”

Steph just raised her palms a little, like a gesture of defeat. “I liked it. Anyway, I’ll trust your judgment on this kind of thing; I’m no expert on modern fashion.”

“We’re not going to send you out looking like you’re wearing a potato sack, if that’s what you’re afraid of,” Toni said. She was resting her head on Steph’s lap, happy as a cat. “I mean, _God_.”

Jon looked over at Bridget, who was making a milkshake in the kitchen. Like she’d said: cheating. She’d already offered to make some for van Dyne as well, but Jon had just looked very confused, and then said, politely, no thank you.

“Ms. Banner, are you…umm, are you ready for your consultation?”

Bridget poured ice cream and Oreo and cherry slush into a tall glass, and then took it with both hands over to her chair. 

Steph looked confused, “Bridget, I thought—“

“Today is the day I pamper myself,” Bridget announced. “High fashion and milkshakes. Dr. Banner is not in her office today, or her yoga pants.”

Toni raised her hand, “Top shelf, Bridge.”

“I’m not coming over there.” 

Toni flopped down her hand. 

Then Toni said, “Well if we’re in the mood for self-indulgence: we should all go down to the spa, after this. Steph, you too.” Toni looked over to waggle her eyebrows at Jon. “You can come with, too, you stud.” 

“You frighten me, Ms. Stark,” Jon said, very seriously.

“I love you too, van Dyne.” Toni hugged Steph’s arm like someone hugging a teddy bear. Then, “Are you designing something for Gigi too? I don’t even know what I’d put our jolly green giantess in.”

“Gigi is quite attractive, in her own way,” Jon said musingly. “I’d have to see her in person though, to get a better sense of size and fit.”

Toni considered this, while Bridge sucked down ice cream bliss through a fat straw. “That _would_ explain the ice cream,” Toni said. “By the by, Jon, how’s Henrietta? Still crazy about the ants?”

Jon actually put down his stylus then. “Do you know want to know what she did? I mean. Disappearing for three days, and what does it turn out: she’s been down in her ant farm, shrunk down by her Pym particles, and happier than—than Tova with a vat of coffee and box of rainbow-colored pop tarts. I thought she was crazy, until she showed me what she did: she’d trained the ants to hold up little signs that said _will you be my boyfriend van Dyne_. Standing in front of daisies and photographed all cute and _everything_.”

“Please don’t tell me you said—“

“Oh, don’t bother Stark,” Bridget said, playing with her straw. “Even I can tell true infatuation when it boots me in the face.”

Jon was beaming, and looking embarrassed by it, and Steph actually said _congratulations_ and then Toni said, “Wait, why were we all here again?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit to [peoriapeoria](http://archiveofourown.org/comments/2257644) for the van Dyne appearance. 
> 
> Photo reference: [Whimsical Ants](http://io9.com/5892239/fanciful-photos-reveal-the-whimsical-secret-lives-of-ants); Henrietta Pym is also more based on Marvel Adventures Hank Pym than any other universe version.


End file.
